Not a Wasted Word

I’ve been dreading the conversation with my parents about Thanksgiving. I know they are less cautious about possible exposure – they eat at a common table with other couples outside, the hang out with people outside without masks on, they have even hosted dinner in their house – and I knew they would want us to come inside to eat. I also knew that was not something we were comfortable with.

I did talk to them, and they promised to take more precautions for two weeks before Thanksgiving. I agreed that if they did that we could eat inside. But as numbers here rose I felt less comfortable with that decision. And my husband didn’t feel comfortable with it at all.

So after losing my shit about hard everything is, I called them back and we talked it out. My parents were understanding and expressed that they were mostly worried that traditional Thanksgiving Day food would get cold quickly outside. I suggested something different, maybe a pozole (my dad makes amazing pozole, which is a stew made with hominy and meat – usually pork). They were interested in this plan. My dad suggested trying a green pozole with turkey. We talked more after the tension had abated, and and in the end we decided to circle back after we knew what the weather would be like. (I will suggest we eat in their massive two-car garage with the door up if it’s raining.)

Later, lying in bed, I realized I hadn’t confronted them about eating outside because I don’t particularly want to do it either. The idea of spending a day lounging around my parents house, feeling warm and happy and content, is incredibly alluring. I would love, love, love to do that. But we can’t do that and ensure everyone will be safe. That is just the reality.

It’s frustrating to see how many people recognize the importance of staying home right now, but decide to travel anyway. Farhad Manjoo’s opinion piece in the New York Times today made me so mad (the majority of the comments mirrored my frustration). That is the kind of thing my parents will read and use to try to convince me that we can just be inside. Other informed, well-educated people are doing it so we can too! It’s hard to do the right thing when you see so many other people doing exactly what you would love to do.

So many of my students are flying right now, many are spending the week with other families in a cabin in Tahoe, and others are hosting relatives that are flying in from all over the country. Then in December they are supposed to come onto campus? After all that exposure? I’m so tired of people making choices that effect our community negatively. It’s really crazy how little people care about the common good when it inconveniences them. And I live in an area where people wear masks in public and generally adhere to public health guidelines more than in other parts of the country where community spread is insanely high.

So yeah, I had a good conversation with my parents and we are making Thanksgiving work for us, outside, this year. We reached a compromise, which reminds me that in real compromise, no one is really happy. I’m relieved that we came to an agreement that works for all of us, but I’m sad that we won’t be having the holiday I know we all want to have. I’m already thinking about Christmas and how we can kind-of celebrate that holiday. I’m thinking a garage celebration (again with the garage door open), probably in our garage, but maybe in theirs? I have lots of padding for the floor and furniture that can be in my garage (stuff I’ve been using for play dates in our backyard. I can get a small tree to put up in the garage, and we can meet to open presents and eat a meal. If its cold I can do laundry and run the drier, which really warms up our garage.

I’ve been working on a post about what it’s like working full time from campus. It’s been hard to put together something coherent on what feels like a massive change. Hopefully I’ll have it up after the break.

How are you celebrating Thanksgiving safely this year?

We have been really lucky since shelter-in-place started that the majority of our social circle was similarly concerned about exposure to the coronavirus. We were all taking the same precautions, so we were able to find ways to see each other while following social distancing protocols. We have always been meeting outside with masks on. On the few occasions we’ve eaten together we’ve stayed more than six feet from each other.

It seems our luck on that has run out. Now that it’s colder, and some days even rainy (gasp!) covid fatigue is setting in and people are finding ways to justify meeting inside with masks on. Or close enough to it.

Today a friend invited us over to watch a movie in their garage. We’ve done that a few times before, with the kids sitting apart from each other on the floor of the garage and the adults sitting in camping chairs apart from each other in the driveway. We were projecting the movie onto the wall so it needed to be dark – which meant we had to start them pretty late. But we made it work. We’ve done two movie nights like that, so I didn’t think much of it.

But when we got there today the garage door was closed (because it was too light to see the projection with the door open) and the girls were sitting together on a couch, masks down so they could munch on snacks. I immediately knew it wasn’t going to work.

It sucks to be the family that is taking more precautions than others. It’s hard to be the aguafiestas (wet blanket). My daughter is already left out of a lot of her friends’ hang out time because we aren’t letting her make YouTube channel videos with them. Luckily they are making videos of themselves playing Roblox and our daughter isn’t that into Roblox, so she’s not too upset that she can’t participate. And we’re letting her play around with making videos of herself playing Minecraft and she’s fine not posting them anywhere. We’ve always put way more limits and restrictions on our kids internet use and screen time than her friends have, so she is used to it, but it still makes her sad. And today made her sad too.

Luckily my kids were okay leaving the movie party once I realized the situation did not meet our social distancing expectations. Both our kids got new games today so they were okay going home to have game screen time. We’re going to watch that movie tomorrow during movie night.

We’ve had to have some difficult conversations with my parents as well. At this point I don’t know if they will be watching our son once a week because we told them we weren’t comfortable with him being over there without a mask if they were having people over to eat inside (we just learned they started doing this while their patio is being repaved), and they haven’t responded to let us know they’re okay with that arrangement. We are having Thanksgiving with them, but they’ve promised no more indoor hosting between now and then.

I’m tired, and we still have so far to go before any of this gets easier. Today’s episode really bummed me out, and I’m already in a pretty low place.

Meanwhile I start working from my classroom full time on Monday.

I guess I thought at some point things would start getting easier. But instead they just keep getting harder. It’s going to be a long, bummer, winter.

{The conversation I had with my friends about the YouTube channel was also a big bummer. I think it’s great the girls are collaborating to reach a common goal and create something they are proud of, but I don’t understand why they have to put it on YouTube. When I asked if the girl who owns the channel had lied to say she was 13 to create the account, her mom didn’t even know she had do that. They thought she could have the channel with parental supervision at 10, but that is what you can start doing at 13. Already a girl they knew in 2nd grade (who caused tons of drama back then) is trolling their channel from North Carolina, where she now lives. I can’t fathom what value posting on YouTube brings, or how that value makes up for the potential downsides. I knew our social media boundaries were going to start becoming more apparent during adolescence, but I didn’t think it would happen so soon.}

{Another thing that’s hard about this is usually I talk this stuff out with my friends to feel better, but I can’t talk to them about this stuff in a way that will ease my anxiety. There is no one to talk to about it all except my husband, but he is so judgemental that it doesn’t really make me feel better. All this makes me feel so isolated and alone.}

Of my many “areas of growth,” a lack of motivation has never really been one of them. I mean yes, in some areas (::cough:: cleaning my house ::cough::) it’s always been a problem, but generally in life? Not so much. Which is why right now I’m struggling so hard to navigate it.

I mentioned before that it’s normal and expected to be really burned out by mid-November. I recognize this feeling as fitting with this time of year. But the complete and utter lack of motivation feels new. I don’t want to do anything. And what’s more alarming is I don’t particularly care if it gets done. I really do not give any f**ks right now about any of it.

I’m not particularly worried yet. About depression I mean. Yes, this is one of the ways depression manifests for me (and millions of others), but this doesn’t feel like depression. I still can feel happiness, which falls along a healthy spectrum of emotions that are also available, but I just can’t bring myself to care about things in a way that motivates me to do them.

I’m chalking it up to exhaustion, and overwhelm. The election was causing a lot of anxiety and anxiety produces adrenaline and adrenaline gets you moving. Now the majority of that anxiety is gone, and combined with the unsatisfactory nature of teaching online, it’s hard to self-motivate.

Luckily, living with depression for a decade has taught me a thing or two about getting the bare minimum done when I’m finding it hard to get anything done. So that is what I’m doing. My house is a shit hole, and my kids are getting more screen time than I would like, but I’m getting through the days.

I’m hoping (the better word is probably expecting) my motivation to improve during and after the Thanksgiving break. But the reality is not a ton will have changed. We’ll still be stuck at home with our kids, who will be bored and frustrated and fighting. Nothing will get easier, except I’ll have fewer things to do every evening. Maybe that will be enough.

The good news is, right now I care very little about what I’m actually accomplishing with my students, so when I go to the staff meeting today and learn about how the electives schedule will be rendered unworkable once we enter Phase 3, I won’t be so mad about all the planning I’ve done that will go down the tubs (Phase 3 is when we bring all kids back to campus on staggered schedules, and they are pushing it up to December from January because they KNOW our numbers are going up and we probably won’t have the option after the new year so they want to get kids in BEFORE that happens – what a short sighed bunch of ass hats they are).

So yeah. That is where I am at. I have zero f*cks left to give but my life gives zero f*cks that I feel that way so I gotta keep on keeping on.

I have to admit, now that Biden has been announced the president-elect, I feel an incredible amount of relief. I still have a lot of processing to do about the fact that way more people voted for him this time around than the last time, and that those people were overwhelmingly white (57% of white voters chose Trump?! WTF?!), but I am so, so glad Trump will no longer be in the White House come January 2021.

I was wondering if I would feel different – less anxious and distracted – after the election and… that might be right. I’m less distracted than I was last week but it will probably take a while for that ambient anxiety that has been swirling in the back of my mind for most of the year to settle.

Meanwhile, I’m still totally burned out. I have absolutely no interest in doing anything related to work. I’m tired of planning. I’m tired of creating content. I’m tired of scoring and inputting scores. I’m tired of teaching. I don’t want to do any of it. It’s Sunday afternoon as I write this and I have a fair amount of work to do but I’m writing this post instead. The thought of creating the lesson I need for Monday and the practice I need for Tuesday makes me want to curl up and… I don’t know. Do anything else?

I know that it’s normal to be this burned out in early November. At this point we’ve only had two days off since we started the school year in mid-August. The fall is a looooong haul and there is always a feeling of exhaustion and overwhelm by November. It’s not odd that I’m counting the days until Thanksgiving break.

What is different is that I can’t schedule any cushion days. At school we’d spend a block period watching Coco after Day of the Dead in early November and I’d get caught up on my work. I can’t do that kind of thing now. I’m already covering so much less content than I should be so it’s hard to allow myself some days off. I guess the real issue is it’s much easier to just phone it in for a day or so when I’m in the classroom, but during distance learning I have to have something meaningful ready for every day.

I’m glad we have Wednesday off. I’m annoyed it’s in the middle of the week, but I’m going to enjoy it. I plan to take my son to his distance learning care (I really do not know what to call it – it’s not camp, it’s not after care) on Tuesday at lunch so he can meet the kids and staff and play around a little. I’ll have him stay until after my staff meeting at 4pm then I’ll pick him up. We’ll have Wednesday off entirely then he’ll go again on Thursday, for a longer part of the day. The week before Thanksgiving he’ll go for even longer.

If you’re wondering why someone who has sent her child to various after care programs and summer camps without any worries is taking such a cautious approach to this new program, it’s because my son will have fewer zooms and less work than the other students and I want him to have abbreviated days there to start so we can figure out how much we need to bring for him to pass the long hours. After the Thanksgiving break I have to be in my classroom full time which means he has to be at this program for two eight hour days, and he definitely won’t have eight hours worth of work to do each day. Since the other kids have different schedules the program can’t plan many activities that they all participate in. I’m really worried it’s going to be a disaster but I hope it works out.

I keep telling myself that I just need to get to the Thanksgiving break. I can do some work that week to get ahead of my planning for the three weeks in December, and then we get another two weeks off. After that I might have students in my classroom. Who knows?

I intended to write more but it’s almost midnight and I need to go to bed. I did end up getting the lesson for tomorrow ready and the practice for Tuesday posted. I’m trying to schedule all my morning emails and preparing for my 8:35am Advisory class before I go to bed which is killing me because it adds an extra 30 minutes to my work at night. I’m hoping that once I’m in my classroom all day I’ll have the time to do it before I go home. Right now it’s really hard, but I feel like I need to get into that habit before I’m attempting to make it to work before I start teaching.

I know when I saw that this was a rough week, I don’t speak only for myself. It was a very, very rough week for all of us.

Even before the election, I really struggled to get a damn thing done. On Tuesday I was mess. By the end of the night I was sure Trump would win and grieved accordingly. It all felt so familiar that I didn’t even cry (I almost did, but I kept it down because I refused to let that @$$hole affect me in that way).

I took something to help me sleep that night and was pleasantly surprised the next morning when things looked better. But I’m still not letting myself feel relief. Even if Biden does win, we’ve seen how a huge portion of our country feels about Trumpism – they aren’t just willing to endure it, they have embraced it wholeheartedly and enthusiastically. McConnell will most likely control the Senate and Biden will get nothing done even if he his elected President. This country is a mess and if I didn’t live in such a liberal stronghold I would be more actively researching ways to leave it (right now I’m only casually exploring other country’s visa requirements).

So yeah, the outcome might not be as awful as it could be, but at this point we know it won’t be very good. Having felt the horrible despair of assuming Trump won again on Tuesday has helped me weather the uncertainty of this week, and the disappointment of knowing just how enthusiastically our country has embraced a man who sows hatred and division, while attacking the very fabric of our democracy.

I really have struggled this week to get a damn thing done. But I did manage to enroll my son in a childcare program at my district. He’ll go Tuesday and Thursday and he starts next week. The M/W/F program was all Kindergarteners and we felt like 5 days a week was too much, since he’ll have a lot less work than the kids in my district, who are getting a much more robust distance learning experience and need more time to attend zooms and do work. We’ll see how it goes.

I ran yesterday and afterward I was finally able to sit down and score two class’s worth of assessments. I also scheduled all my morning emails to send. I need to get into the habit of this because once I’m commuting to my classroom I won’t have time to email anyone before the school day starts.

I finished the second book of The Broken Earth Trilogy by N.K. Jemisin. I’m loving it so much. I can’t wait to start the final installment.

I hope you’re all hanging in there, and that we feel more confident about the outcome of the election before soon.

First of all, a big thank you to everyone who commented to let me know I’m not alone in my struggle. I hate that others are feeling as hopeless and overwhelmed as I am (if not more so!), but it does help to know I’m not the only one who hasn’t just moved on as if things are business are usual.

Thursday I taught my 7th period class from my empty classroom. I needed some Day of the Dead materials and I decided it made more sense to try teaching from my classroom, which I have to do soon anyway, than go down to grab stuff one afternoon. I also made plans to get there early and meet with my principal to talk about what returning to the classroom would actually look like. I assumed we could reach an agreement where I come in three times a week. Three times a week I felt like I could manage.

But it turns out three days a week is not an option. The district has decided that we have to be in our rooms from 8:30 to 3pm every day and the union has agreed that if some teachers have to be there every day, every teacher has to be there every day. It’s only fair. (I think they’re doing this so that everyone will be equally upset, and equally ready to take next steps, like working to contract, or possibly even participating in a sick out – neither of which has been formally mentioned yet.)

So starting November 16th, I have to be on campus, teaching from my empty classroom, every. single. day.

I cried a lot Thursday. First of all, teaching from my empty classroom is super depressing. It’s one thing to teach from home, which is weird. But the weirdness of teaching online is matched by the weirdness of being at home while I’m doing it. Teaching from my classroom, which used to have all my students in it, feels weird in a really depressing way. It was really hard to focus while I taught that class.

I also just don’t want to be going down to work like this. I want to be home, supporting my family. It doesn’t feel fair that I have to commute to work, to teach in exactly the same way I was teaching from home, when nothing else from my old life is accessible. Everything else is still locked down, but I still have to go to work every day. If I were doing something differently at work it would make more sense, but I’m not. In fact, I won’t be for a long time.

We have decided to our son in some kind of childcare. If I were going to work three days a week we could cobble together some kind of coverage between us. But if I have to be at work full time – 40 hours a week – we need to put him in some kind of childcare for at some days.

My district is offering childcare, and they are giving staff a discount. We can sign up for just M/W/F or Tu/Th. We’re thinking we’ll do three days a week, so we have that option on weeks we need it. We can also just not go on Fridays when that feels feasible.

Tuesday I don’t teach as much so my kids can come to work with me and participate in their zooms, and do their work, from my classroom. My husband plans to take Thursdays off, using covid leave and the copious time he has accrued in the last seven months by not taking any sick time or vacation days. My daughter will stay at home on the days my son goes to childcare, because she can get her work done on her own.

So this is our new normal. It definitely starts November 30th. It might start November 16th, which is the first day of our second trimester. We get the entire week of Thanksgiving off, so if it starts on the 16th it’s only one week extra.

I’m really sad about it. I don’t want to work from my classroom, totally isolated from my family, and even my colleagues (because we can’t interact with each other in any real, substantive ways). I don’t want to be stuck in a place I don’t want to be, alone, apart from everyone. A couple days of it might have even been nice, but five days a week? No thank you.

But I don’t get to say no thank you. I don’t have a choice. So next month I will start going to work again. And it won’t feel like things are going back to normal because nothing about it will be normal.

I’ve been writing this post for four days, so I’m just going to post it. I hope everyone had a safe Halloween and that they can vote safely and easily by Tuesday.

I’m having a hard time right now. I don’t read many posts about people struggling with this anymore. Some peoples lives are almost back to normal – kids are in school, childcare is available again, life is resembling the before times. But for us that is not the case. Even though San Francisco is the densest urban area in California to reach the yellow tier (the second lowest level of restrictions), our kids’ school district has no plans to return ANYONE to classroom before 2021 and even then it will only be urgent learners (and they don’t actually have a plan to bring them back). Meanwhile I have to go back to my empty classroom to teach (still online) in a couple weeks.

I am so tired of this. It’s been eight months and nothing changes. Things just get harder, if anything. It’s hard to keep going when there is no end in sight.

And yes I know how good I have it. I have a draft about all the good in my life right now. And yes I know I can cut corners, I have another draft about all the expectations I am allowing to fall by the wayside (a draft I started in early September!) But it’s still really hard.

I wonder if I’ll feel better after the election is over. No matter the outcome, at least the uncertainty will be less overwhelming (and yes, I also know the uncertainty is unlikely to dissipate for weeks or even months after Nov 3 – I’m talking about once it’s all said and done, whenever that may be). But maybe not. I really don’t know.

All I do know is I’m struggling. And I wanted to put it out there so that the other people who are struggling, and maybe aren’t hearing that anyone else is, can know that they are not the only ones. I’m feeling worse than I have in a long, long time. If you are too, you are not alone.

This week was rough. A lot of ups and downs. By Friday I was exhausted.

Thursday was my son’s 7th birthday. We’ve been counting down since early September. 55 days. To say I was grateful to get it over with would be an understatement.

Wednesday I went to Target to get some last minute things. I also picked up McDonald’s for the kids on the way home. That night I got a text from a friend with the link to a GoFundMe she saw on Facebook. A very good friend from high school’s husband died. She has two young sons and her husband stayed at home with them. I was shocked to learn of her loss. It was hard to concentrate Wednesday night, but I had to score work, create more work, wrap presents, and decorate my son’s room after he fell asleep. I also cried quite a bit.

Sunday morning my son was up at 6am. He was thrilled with all the decorations and the few early birthday presents that were already in his room. I made him come back to bed with me, where he fell quickly back to sleep and I lay next to him in his bottom bunk, listening to six songs from the Captain Underpants soundtrack on repeat. This is where I learned that my friend’s husband committed suicide.

I’ve been to eight funerals in my life and four have been for people who died by suicide. I wish this country cared about mental health; that they screened for mental illness and provided mental health services for those who need them. Losing someone to suicide is so devastating.

Thursday was hard. I had a lot of classes to teach. My son was eager (understatement) for his party with my parents at 4pm. I was thinking a lot about my friend, who I called and left a voicemail for. It was hard to get through the day.

My parents came at 4pm with the party. I had decorated the backyard but they brought everything else – early dinner, cake and ice cream. I was very grateful for my parents help.

The party was a low key affair. My son opened his presents and we ate food. My son blew out candles and we enjoyed cake. By 5:30 my parents were loading their stuff back into their car. Thursday night my kids played some of their new video games with their dad while I went downstairs to rest for a while.

Friday things were more back to normal. My son had class and all the work from the day before he had to make up. I taught some classes and attended a PTA meeting. I completed some training modules I have to do by Nov 1st. I took my son to the dojo and got our backyard ready, again, for a dual birthday celebration with my son’s friend’s family. They came over at 4:30 with In-n-Out and we celebrated both boys (his friends’ birthday is one week after his). It was nice to spend time with them (they have taken our son for outdoor play dates a lot these past two months and we are very grateful for that) but I was so, so tired by Friday afternoon. I was very happy when I finally got to pour myself a drink Friday night.

Saturday was low key and I was grateful for that. We stayed home playing video games and reading. We didn’t see anyone or really do anything. It’s what we all needed. I got some work done and realized that by the evening I actually felt relatively caught up. I haven’t felt that way in a long time.

Sunday I cleaned up around the house. It’s a shit show and causing my stress and anxiety. I’ve realized messes in some spaces, like cat hair and shoes all over the stairs, or LEGOS in the living room where I work, cause more stress than other messes, so I tackled those. I took the kids to the Great Highway to run while they rode their bikes. It was a beautiful day and it was nice to get outside. We declined an invitation to see a movie with friends that evening. Even with only 20 people I knew in the theater, the idea of being inside with people for that long weirded me out. I wasn’t really in the mood to socialize either. Instead we stayed home and watched a movie and went to bed early.

I’m glad last week is over. We only have three more weeks left of the first trimester and I have to be back in my classroom teaching by Nov 13. Right now I just want the election to be over. Everything else pales in comparison to that.

My life feels unmanageable, but I have refused to believe that there isn’t something I can do to make it better. I have a lot of control over what I teach, and how I teach it, and I feel there have to be choices I can make that create less work for me. I thought I had made those choices this week, and Wednesday things actually felt very manageable. I didn’t feel like I was putting out work fires all day, or racing the clock to get things done. I was able to help my son do his work, and my daughter and I even took a walk to get bubble tea.

But then today I realized I had forgotten to finalize some lesson plans, and actually it was two sets of lesson plans because my one class is really at two completely different levels (two of the kids should really move down a level but their parents refuse (they are brothers) so I have basically an extra class worth of content to create right now, and I also have to figure out when to actually teach it to these kids, since I’m spending my class time teaching the other 27 kids in the class). So today was one of those days where I was perpetually behind, trying to eat my lunch in the seven minutes before my 1:30 class started, totally overwhelmed and frazzled and in the weeds every minute.

And of course my kids still needed me. My son is SO BORED all day long. He finished his work quickly (which honestly doesn’t bother me because the only thing worse than him being bored is him having to do school work). I don’t know what to have him do. He reads some, and listens to podcasts, and plays with his toys, but there are A LOT of hours to kill in a day and I don’t have a lot to offer him. The program at our dojo took a two week break and it’s been the longest two weeks of the school year. My daughter is super moody, barking NO at me constantly and speaking to me in the most blood boiling tones. She asks for help but then balks when I give it. She is not very pleasant to be around and it’s really hard managing her mood swings. Today I had to deal with her screaming through tears at me about finishing a math test THREE MINUTES before I had to go engage 30 middle schoolers on Zoom. Those are the transitions that totally destroy me.

So I don’t know. Maybe I can’t really make significant changes to my life so that things feel easier. I am trying to work full time while making sure my kids are doing their school work, and also just managing them being home even when they are done with their school work. I am dealing with an introverted husband who just wants to be alone but can’t find any solitude and is anxious and depressed about the state of everything. I never see my friends because they are all managing the same insanity, many of them without a spouse to support them. And soon the delicate balance that is at least allowing us to get through the days will be shot to shit when I have to return to my classroom.

Our union did end up meeting with the district and a CTA (state-level union) representative informed them that our district can require we return to campus, as long as they provide safe working conditions. Somehow our MOU is not enough to ensure we can choose where we teach from.

So it looks like in mid-November I have to start teaching from my classroom. This is so that I can familiarize myself with the safety protocols enough to be able to bring students back, something they anticipate doing at the middle school level in FEBRUARY OR MARCH. So yeah, I guess I need 2-3 months of teaching from my room to be ready to handle students coming back… so stupid.

I have to say, selfishly, the idea of teaching from my classroom is pretty amazing. Eight hours of uninterrupted time to work in a quiet room… yes please! But it will be a disaster for my family. My husband will absolutely lose his mind.

I cried about it for a couple days (and realized I have not been taking my magnesium, which I remedied) then I started planning. There are still a lot of details I’m not sure of, like if I really have to go in every day (I’m hoping not). I do think I could make three days a week in my classroom work well enough. One day I go to work without the kids (hopefully my husband takes that day off – he hates work right now and would be okay taking off a day a week), one day I go and bring them with me and we make it work (it will be awful but it will be one day). Then one day I take them and my parents pick them up for a few hours. This would be doable. If I do have to be there every day, I really don’t know how we can make it work without everyone being significantly more unhappy. So right now I’m going to focus on my plan, which may work.

And I guess I’m going to accept that there isn’t much I can do to make any of this more manageable. I am teaching 150 kids remotely and it takes a shit ton of time to make that work, and my kids need my attention and my husband needs my support, so it’s going to be hard and I’m just going to have to muddle through. Accepting that might be the best way to get through this.

We had a long weekend in these parts. San Francisco has always recognized Indigenous Peoples Day but my district only started taking it off last year. I was SO HAPPY for the break today.

This past Thursday our board voted to approve Phase 1 of our Return to School Plan, which requires teachers return to their classrooms to teach (via zoom) by November 13. This directly disregards the MOU in place with our union, which allows us to work from home during distance learning if we choose. Our union will start negotiating with the district tomorrow. To say I’m frustrated that I might have to commute to my campus to teach from an empty room is an understatement. If I have to start working from my classroom the delicate balance we’ve created at home will totally fall apart and everything will be worse than it is now (which is really not very good). I’m disappointed with our board for asking us to do something that their employers are surely not asking them (and/or their spouses) to do. It feels unfair and unnecessary.

There are parents in our district who are very organized, and vocal, about bringing back students as soon as possible, and I am assuming we’ll be back at some point around the New Year. It’s going to be a shit show and I’m not looking forward to it. I really do think people are trying to return to a reality that is just not possible yet, or maybe they think that once we go back this virus will really have gone away. But going back won’t change anything except our chances of getting sick. And some hybrid schedule that only has kids on campus certain days of the week is not going to return anyone to the school experience they so desperately crave. Thinking about how bad this is going to get makes it hard to focus on all the work I have to do now. And truly it’s so, so much work. Having another massive stress hanging over my head is not helping.

We also got a testy email from our principal announcing tomorrow’s staff meeting, and explaining that we have to be there and if we’re not we have to put in the hours in our management system and personally write her explaining why we aren’t there. This is a noticeable change in tone from her, so I’m assuming that it’s coming from higher up. Shit is definitely about to get ugly.

In happier news… My parents took our kids for an overnight this weekend. They came late Saturday afternoon to pick them up. I did some work on the elliptical and then my husband and I ordered sushi to pick up. I haven’t had sushi in SO LONG and it was amazing. We watched a movie with some cocktails and passed out. The next morning we slept in, then ordered brunch from one of our favorite Mexican places nearby. We don’t normally eat out and we want to do more to support our favorite local restaurants so every once in a while we splurge.

After brunch I drove down to work to pick up some materials from my classroom and then went for a run before I picked up the kids. I even got my car washed at my parents’ house! (We don’t have a hose that reaches to the front of our house so we can’t really wash it at home and I hate to pay to have it washed.) It has been a long time and it really needed it, especially after all the ash that had been in the air.

Sunday night we watched Guardians of the Galaxy. It’s my son’s second Marvel movie (we watched Thor Ragnarok last weekend) and he loved it. It’s fun watching the Marvel movies with them.

Today I had my daughter’s friends over for the second part of our book club project. It fell pretty flat but the girls enjoyed being together. In the future I’m going to stick to the discussion sessions and avoid the projects. It’s just too hard to engage them in academic pursuits on the weekends.

Oh, and a friend of mine found my blog. She was googling SFUSD because she’s so disappointed in our options for middle school next year, and found a post I wrote about the PTA being a part of the problem in our district. I had actually written the post as a letter to the PTA presidents listserv so the first paragraph is pretty specific about the school and its situation (without naming it directly). Still, I was a little rattled that she recognized it was me. There is nothing on my blog I wouldn’t want my friends to read, but I’ve learned the hard way that I usually regret when people I know start reading it. I NEVER mention my blog to my friends – they have no idea I write it – so it was startling to have her find it by randomly googling something and then so quickly recognizing I was the author. She was very nice about how weird I was initially about it, and I doubt I’ll have issues with my current friends reading it moving forward, but it made me rethink how much identifying information I share here.

I have been working on and off all weekend and I’m so tired. I keep trying to bring down the amount of work I’m assigning, hoping it will translate to less work for me but it doesn’t seem to be working. I still have so, so much work to do. I wonder if taking the extra class was a mistake. I thought that since the content was the same as for two other classes it wouldn’t be that much more work, but scoring the work of 32 more students, and communicating with them when they are missing that work, takes a lot of time. I just feel like I’m working constantly.

I can’t believe our board is trying to make us work from our classrooms – on top of all the bullshit we are dealing with. It makes me so mad.

I think it’s time to sign off, or this rant will never end.